I'm confused...if Kiro puts love first above everything else, how come many of his karmas/dates don't portray that aspect?
Hello, nony I hope you have a wonderful day/evening wherever you are!
But now I'm confused. Could you elaborate what you mean when you say he DOESN'T have dates showing that aspect? Let me be clear—Kiro putting love above all else isn't romantic idealism that he preaches to the world. It's a deeply intrinsic survival logic. A personal belief that is deeply ingrained into who he is as a person.
And I'm not talking about love in the romantic sense of the word, although that is part of it too. By love I mean connection. Personal bonds and relationships. As someone who has lived a life of depravity in his initial years, where he was seen as nothing more than a number—not even human... a life without love is meaningless to Kiro.
For most people, life would come before all else. After all, nothing else matters if you aren't even alive and healthy to live the way you want to. But for Kiro, survival without emotional connection is no different from being dead. He has already experienced what it means to survive without being loved — He survived the brutality of Twin Leaves Orphanage. He survived the inhuman experiments. But survival alone did not make any of those experiences meaningful in any way. For him, love is the only thing that turns 'survival' into 'living'.
That is why he ranks love above all else. He ranks love above freedom (which is also very important to him) because again, love is what gives freedom meaning. Without love, freedom would be like letting a bird out of the cage without even teaching it how to fly. For Kiro, love is freedom. I mean, there's even a whole date exploring that very aspect:
Kiro is often described as someone who is willing to burn himself for love, and has already shown how far he is willing to go to protect the things and people he cares about — Like sacrificing his career to protect his fans, becoming Helios and even the Boss of Black Swan, taking on a deadly experiment to reunite with his beloved after the world reset, taking MC's place in the Game of Hunters, making himself into a villain to solve the many Evolver crises... The list goes on.
Which explains why Kiro can be morally volatile sometimes. If love is the highest value, then everything else becomes negotiable: Laws. Systems. Ethics. Reputation. His own identity. And especially his life. For him, love is not just a soft emotion; it is a governing principle. The axis of all things. It's why he can be incredibly tender and incredibly ruthless at the same time. Why he can smile brightly on stage and then disappear into the shadows to carry out something morally ambiguous. Because his axis never changes — protect what he loves.
As such, I would argue that yes, Kiro is very much a character who puts love above everything else. Everything that is important to Kiro has something to do with love and connection. His family — Apple Box, Cello, and MC. His father figure and mentor, Key. His agent, Savin. His maternal figure, Madam Seidel. His friends. His fans. His music, which is there not just as a language to express himself, but also to connect himself to other people, and them to each other. If you read Kiro's Season 3 Rumours & Secrets, as well as his Late Night Date, you'll realise just how much of Kiro's job as a Superstar hinges on the concept of love to be sustained. Without it, he has no connection to his music, his fans, and even himself.
And psychologically, this makes sense for Kiro's character. If someone grows up without secure attachment, they often develop an attachment style where connection becomes the axis of meaning. Kiro does not fear death the way he fears emotional abandonment. The thought of being unloved, forgotten, or unnecessary wounds him more deeply than any physical danger ever will.
Anyways, I'll stop here for now, but I will be going more in depth with this in the analysis that I'm currently working on, and also, I hope that I've cleared some of your doubts, nony!
